Tuesday, November 08, 2005

FOOTPRINTS - This is an annual series of media seminars that the students of SIMC organise. It usually happens in 10 cities around the country, and is conducted entirely by us. Event themes, speakers, sponsorship, and all that jazz. The college doesn't help (they're more of a hinderance really). And we have to do this, it's a module worth 50 marks. If you flunk, you don't get a diploma. We chose to go to Kochi.

IN KOCHI - 7 of us went to Kochi, all first timers, the only footprints team this year to not have any, well, natives, for lack of a better word. Three of them knew malayalam, so we could communicate around. We stayed in a rundown hotel, for free, friend's contact. Kochi is a very cheap city. Printing, travelling, eating. Ofcourse, everything shuts down by 9:30, so that suxx. But the city is fun. It's quite clean, relatively open, no over-population.The buses are great, huge windows and canvas shutters, so it's never claustrophobic inside. It's a joyride really. These drivers apparantly use brakes only at the stops, and drive like maniacs at breakneck speed. Narain Karthikeyan fastest Indian my ass.

THE EVENT - Our theme was "Sailing On The Banana Boat - Where's the Malayali Media Headed?" Sounds a bit corny, but we came up with it in a crunch, and never got around to changing it. We covered -

The current status of the media in Kerala

Expansion across regional and national boundaries

What they see in their future

Upcoming career opportunities

We held it at BTH, Darbar Road Hall. About a 160 students attended. Good turnout. Our speakers were -

R. Pillai, News Director AIR Thiruvananthapuram

Kamal - National Award winning film director

T. N. Gopakumar - Host of Asianet's "Kannadi"

Sebastian Paul - Journalist turned M. P.

The event was on the 25th. I reached Kochi on the 4th night, and left on the 26th.

AFTER THE EVENT - Went to Roshan's aunt place, 4 hours from Kochi, forgot the name. Then went to Idukki, heheh, and proceeded on to the Periyar sanctuary. It's a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, place. So green and lush!!

Hah, this is great, some concrete casting news!! And now, Topher Grace, Electro, or Venom? Definetely not Ned Leeds, I hope.

But seriously, if they have Venom and Sandman in the same movie, i can't see how they could possibly play off each other. Unless the Sandman is just gonna be there just for a minor pre-credits fight. Or if they screw his character up like they screwed up the Scarecrow in Batman Begins.

Friday, November 04, 2005

Hah! While doing a bit of ego-surfing (google: bottlehed), I stumbled upon one of my forum convos with good 'ol Jorgo. An aborted attempt to write a short story, it's pretty funny.

JORGOToday I came back from a walk and the wind was sweeping a piece of paper by my feet. On one side two lines of text were written. I picked up the paper, dirty from the dusty ground to read what was written on it.Curiously, the lines read:I love you, I love you. I promise, I will never play chess againDoesn't that fuel your imagination somehow? I invite you to make up a little story around those facts... let's see what you come up with!

MEK, first line... He could never remember - did the horse thing jump in the l-shape, or was it the elephant?

JORGOIn the words of Sage: "Don't quit your dayjob yet." Somehow I wasn't imagining this as a comedy although I never let a good pun pass by myself (or a bad one, for that matter). Well, fair enough.My story would start like this:He had everything thought out until the last move. He had calculated all the possibilities, all the logical reactions and all the consequences. Yet there was one thing that he hadn't taken into account and that would prove his undoing: He was not only the player, but also a piece...MEYou're supposed to continue from my line...Anywez, i'll take off on your start..unfortunately, he couldn't figure out which piece he was. The agility of the horse intrigued him, but a childhood trauma left him scarred, and forever vary of the L-shape (but that's a story for another day).Ofcourse, he identified his love for peanuts as a sub-conscious desire to be the elephant, but the pachyderms never forgot, and he could barely remember his head if it wasn't screwed on...JORGOElephant? Horse? He had come to a point where he couldn't tell game and reality apart. This damned addiction to eating peanut butter sandwhiches! One day his clogged arteries would put an end to his career as a chess master.MEBut till that day, he'd treat life like a black-and-white chessboard...